physics

Lattice painting

I became interested in nets and lattices as a metaphor for energy of all kinds some years ago. As an artist whose influences range from physics to Buddhism to psychiatry, energy is the common thread :emotional energy, the multiple energy forms in physics, the energy we confront in dealing with mental conflicts etc. So often times in my work you will see a colour and a superimposed interlacing lattice of lines. This is where the motif comes from. This painting is an example of these ideas from around 2011.

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Energy Fields

It’s fairly obvious that I have a thematic preoccupation with “energy fields”. As several people have implied in their comments, what am I on about here?  In our emotional lives, in our scientific discourses and in our colloquialisms, we are immersed in the concept of the energy field.

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In physics, every theory engages the concept of the field, whether it be gravitational, electromagnetic, or quantum fields. Ancient Chinese medicine speaks of energy fields or meridians of the body. We hear of auras and chakras whose fields interact. We have the fields into which our knowledge is divided. We have the field of dreams. We have countless metaphors that engage the power of the energy field. In my work, colours and form are a metaphorical language that attempts to understand our archetypal obsession with energy fields.

All Travel Rolls into One

 

 

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Travel? Once you’ve done enough, it all merges into one long journey in your memory. I like this because you have photographs that aren’t immediately self-revealing about the where. Weirdly enough or amazingly enough, this experience of travel remembered coincides with all that strange quantum physics stuff that trickles down to most of us through translaters of science.

In particular, there is the idea that our minds impose Time onto our experience to make it intellectually manageable. This is the idea that Time does not truly exist, and that our experience of past / present / future is illusory. Go read summaries of Einstein, Bohr et. al. if you think I’m exaggerating. Go look up Biocentrism for a real wobbly one…

So, getting back to my point….when you have done enough travel, especially a lot of travel as people are able to do today, it all easily becomes One Narrative. That’s why these beautiful beach rocks in the post were timeless and placeless for me, well, at least until I thought really hard about where we were. I kinda like that.

Energies

In many of my paintings, I attempt to capture different forms of energy. This reflects the pathways of my reading life into the world of physics and biology, as well as the invisible energies in literary narratives where you feel immersed in a strong atmosphere. That’s why you will see repeating patterns of overlapping waves as below. Why should waves be my motif of energy? I don’t know, except to say I think we are again getting into the realm of a universal archetype. The biggest point here is that abstract art itself is the embodiment of atmospheres. Each painting that works seems to have captured an atmosphere that even words fail to describe.

 

 

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